One Last Breath
by Pickles
Summary: Everyone goes through depression differently. Yohji deals with his in an extreme way. Rating for depression, blood, angst, and... what do you call it... oh yes, inferred child abuse.


Hi. I needed to do something different. So I decided to write my first songfic. Here it is.  
  
The song is from Creed's third album. It's called "One Last Breath." Hence, the title of the story.  
  
- - denotes song lyrics  
  
:: :: denotes thoughts  
  
The song isn't mine, the boys aren't mine, the story is.  
  
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One Last Breath  
  
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-Please come now I think I'm falling  
  
I'm holding onto all I think is safe-  
  
A blonde man stands in the bathroom, shower running to disconcert the others that live in his flat. Once he was beautiful; but depression, lack of sleep and care, and hiding in darkness combine to make an effect that is at once haggard, unwholesome, and altogether unnatural on this magnificent creature. Once well-kept golden locks are stringy and tangled. Formerly emerald eyes have turned a dull, glassy green, shadowed by sleepless nights. Once tan skin is pallid and clammy.  
  
-It seems I found the road to nowhere  
  
And I'm trying to escape-  
  
Still elegant, tapered hands play absently with a garroting wire. Gloveless, the wire is cutting into the smooth skin, but this does not faze him. Nor indeed does it seem to reach his brain at all. His pain/pleasure center seems to have shut down while he contemplates the most recent events in his life.  
  
::Aya... why... I loved you the way I've never loved before... why can't you love me...::  
  
This aloof ruby-haired male is what his thoughts are currently dwelling on. Once they were lovers. Now they are estranged, a half a city, forty miles and millions of emotions apart. Not by his choice, either. It was Aya who left him, Aya that abandoned him to ravening emotions and bloodstained nightmares.  
  
-I yelled back when I heard thunder  
  
But I'm down to one last breath  
  
And with it let me say  
  
Let me say-  
  
The water is beginning to lose its heat in the shower as his thoughts go still deeper, dealing with life and death and the border between them--and more importantly, how he is going to cross it.  
  
::I've always known I was going to die a violent death... After all, in my line of work there's no avoiding it. But to cause it myself... to bring about my own end... I've never thought of it before...::  
  
His mind remembers Aya's harsh words, completely untrue, at their last meeting: "You mean nothing to me, dammit! Stop loving me!" He doesn't know his lover lied.  
  
His eyes follow the graceful play of his chosen instrument of havoc. With it in his hands, he is alternately an avenging angel in all his dark glory, taking what those who wrong the world have taken in their turn, or a bloody demon, reveling in his ability to destroy the divine creation and the taste of the blood he has spilled. This is the first time he has been human, merely an incredibly complex, amazingly lonely man with all the world to give and no one to give it to.  
  
-Hold me now  
  
I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking  
  
Maybe six feet  
  
Ain't so far down-  
  
His eyes fasten on his reflection in the mirror. He watches his worn visage in a sick fascination with himself and his rapidly deteriorating condition. He cares not for the ghosts of his past he sees over his shoulder: first his mother, whom he could not save from his father, then his father, whom he could not save from himself. A young woman he knew and loved by two names he has both avenged and destroyed. Finally Aya, an ice-cold man who has reserved his love for someone more special than the man in the mirror. He watches only the reflection of himself, not seeing all four urging against what he is thinking of.  
  
"Shit, I look like hell," he muses aloud, his voice hoarse. "No wonder Aya left me."  
  
-I'm looking down now that it's over  
  
Reflecting on all of my mistakes-  
  
"What did I do?" he asks his reflection. He reaches out and touches the mirror gently, caressing his own sallow, sunken cheek reflected there. "Why can't Aya love me?"  
  
But no one has ever truly loved him. Not his mother, who ignored him for the illicit pleasures and hidden ecstasies of the street world. She would beat him the next day in the monstrous aftermath of such things, saying he was too loud. From her he got golden locks, a charming smile, a lithe body, and an addiction to any drug he can get his hands on. Not his father, who sold his son's tiny body to feed an expensive and violent coke habit. From him he got haunting green eyes and memories of abuse. Not the two-faced woman, who used his body and his knowledge of his teammates when all he offered was affection. She left him with guilt enough for the both of them. And not Aya, who refused his love. From him he got a lifetime of crushing pain. No one has ever loved him.  
  
"No one can love me," he snarls at his reflection.  
  
He raises his fist and smashes the mirror.  
  
-I thought I found the road to somewhere  
  
Somewhere in His grace-  
  
"Why am I here?" he asks a glass shard. His knuckles are bloodied now. The garroting wire has cut deep into his hands, but the cuts are not wide enough to worry about. If he were in a mood to worry about them, which he is not.  
  
"Do I have a reason? If I do, I can't find it." For in all of his life, he has never felt as though he had a purpose. Nothing has made him feel needed. Nothing has made him feel as though he belonged. He thought he had found it in the traitorous woman and the cold man both--but cruel fate his told him otherwise.  
  
He makes his decision. But somewhere, something in him cannot commit to the idea of a self-inflicted death. So he makes a deal out loud with himself. "If someone saves me now, I'll never do this again," he declares.  
  
-I cried out heaven save me  
  
But I'm down to one last breath  
  
And with it let me say  
  
Let me say-  
  
He cuts crosses deep into his own wrists with the garroting wire.  
  
-Hold me now  
  
I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking-  
  
"Yohji? Sorry, man, I know you're showering, but I really have to go." A young man walks in, dark and healthy and handsome and glorious in it. He swears at the sight of his best friend in the clutches of a self-wrought death. "Shit! Yohji!"  
  
He crosses the small space between them and yanks the wire from the blonde, not caring about the cuts he is receiving to his own hands and the glass he is stepping on barefoot. Yohji collapses, unconscious, into his arms.  
  
"Shit!" he shouts. "Omi! Call an ambulance! Yohji's hurt!"  
  
-That maybe six feet  
  
Ain't so far down-  
  
Yohji awakes to blinding light. He sits up slowly, eyeing the bandages on his wrists.  
  
"Where am I?" he wonders aloud. He looks around and takes in his surroundings--white room, beeping machinery hooked up to himself--and chastises himself as a fool. "Idiot! After that stunt, of course I'm in the hospital."  
  
He does not remember the dark young man finding him.  
  
-Sad eyes follow me  
  
But I still believe there's something left for me-  
  
He looks over and sees the dark young man asleep in a chair next to his bed. He decides to awake his friend, not caring what he will say.  
  
"Hey, Ken. Wake up. Tell me what's going on."  
  
Ken starts, looks at Yohji, and jumps out of his chair. He wraps his arms fiercely around his older friend. "Don't you ever fucking scare me like that again," he mumbles into Yohji's ear. A single tear drips down his cheek onto Yohji's hospital gown. "You hear me? Promise me."  
  
"I promise," Yohji tells him, amazed that Ken should care so much.  
  
-So please come stay with me  
  
`Cause I still believe there's something left for you and me  
  
For you and me  
  
For you and me-  
  
"Oh god--I thought you were gonna die," Ken says, pulling away. He surveys his friend's face, then breaks out into a grin, one so bright and infectious Yohji cannot help but answer it. "But you didn't. You're still here. With me."  
  
"Yeah," Yohji agrees, feeling pretty stupid. "I am."  
  
Ken's face immediately morphs to anger. "So why didn't you fucking talk to me, huh?" he asks fiercely.  
  
"I don't know." Yohji finds himself asking the same question. "Who found me?"  
  
"I did." Ken closes his eyes, trying to block the memories. "It was awful--don't you -ever- fucking do that again."  
  
"I won't," Yohji promises. And he won't. He promised himself he wouldn't. But right now, he needs something. "Ken?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Hold me, please? Just for a little while."  
  
-Hold me now  
  
I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking-  
  
Ken embraces Yohji protectively as Yohji contemplates how close he was to death. He resolves to start over.  
  
-That maybe six feet  
  
Ain't so far down-  
  
And this is the way to do it. With his friend who cares about him, with hope, with determination, with life, he starts over again.  
  
And he is loved.  
  
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Dark, I know. I DID say I was in the mood for something different... Did you like it? Let me know! REVIEWS!!!!!!!! 


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